Good morning EXer’s!!
When we first prepare to quit, we start reading about our addiction, trying to understand it. Often we find as we read the various literature that the key to quitting is to get through those first hard days. The days when we must combat the physical part of our addictions as well as the mental part.
We get to the end of that first week and realize that it’s not over yet! There’s still so much more to do. How can this be? After all, I’ve already beaten the addiction. Or have I?
When our minds become consumed with thoughts of the past, especially such a recent past we tend to compare that past to the present. We’re so new on the path to quitting that we have no data to compare to other than the addicted life that we just left and when we make that comparison all we see is that now, things are uncomfortable. Now, life seems to be filled with stress. Now, our minds are in constant turmoil. Now, we find our minds focused on things that cannot benefit us or our quits.
So how can this be better? The answer is right there in front of us of course, it’s just hard to see right now. The realities that we must focus on are in the future and for some, this makes the journey seem so endless because it’s not a journey that offers instant satisfaction. No. Instead the journey to freedom takes a bit of time and commitment to achieve. We have to wait for our rewards.
We know that the physical rewards are almost instantaneous. Everything starts improving physically the moment we quit. But for some reason, that little piece of knowledge fails to bring us peace. We’re so focused on the past that we can’t seem to stab a ray of understanding into the future. And yet this is where everything we want to achieve resides. This is where the freedom resides and a kind of peace that we haven’t felt since we started this wicked addiction.
So I guess we now have to find a way to look past the temporary discomforts of the moment to the sunshine that lies on the other side of darkness. We must try to remember that even the stars of the night proves to us that there is light in our futures for the stars represent a reflection of what’s to come.
So never fall for the words of the addiction. Never believe even for a moment that there is no light after the darkness for the reality is that the light is abounding! It’s all around you just waiting for the moment of acceptance. Waiting for the moment that we can see it through the clouds of our own addictions.
The day that we can turn our focus to the future instead of remaining in a kind of static state of addicted hell, we begin to find peace. The moment that we understand that what we’re doing right now is creating that wonderful future where our peace and freedom resides and can look past the current discomforts and focus instead on the wonderful reality that we’re creating for ourselves. This is the day that we step out of no man’s land and walk for the first time with our focus where it belongs because so long as we stay focused on the truth that lies in the future, then this can change the realities of the present.
Go for it! The dream is there. It’s been there every since you put out your last cigarette! It’s embedded deep in your heart and all you have to do to see it is believe in the future. You know, the one that doesn’t have cigarettes in it. . .
Keep your eye on the prize!
ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!
